Authentication is a basic requirement for many services. Authentication systems utilize passwords as an authentication mechanism to provide access approval for a user to access user accounts. The passwords include a string of characters. The user tends to choose a unique and strong password for the user accounts in accordance with password strength and security and usability tradeoffs. If the user is associated with multiple user accounts, then the user may face difficulty in managing the multiple user accounts because of memory related issues. In order to enable the user to manage multiple user accounts, the authentication systems provide password hints associated with the passwords for the multiple user accounts.
In order to provide the password hints, existing authentication systems allows the user to select a text that includes a word or a sentence or to input answers for certain questions at a time of creation of a particular user account. When the user forgets the password for the particular user account, the authentication system provides the text selected by the user or answers inputted by the user as the password hints for the particular user account.
However, the existing authentication systems either ask users to formulate the password hints or store the password hints for lateral retrieval. Thus, results in human errors, social engineering attacks and compromising password hint files or databases. If the text selected or answers provided by the user includes more information, then the password hints are more vulnerable to guessability, dictionary attacks and brute force attacks.
Also, the existing authentication systems do not generate the password hints dynamically to assist the user to verify the correctness of the passwords associated with the user account before submitting login credentials.
Therefore, in light of the above mentioned prior art, there is a need for a method and system for generating a hint to recall a password for a user account of a user.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the invention.